Absorbent and adsorbent materials are usable for removing and/or recovering of components from water and air, or for picking up of one material off of another. Such sorbent materials may be placed in contact with fluids to remove contaminants for purification of the fluids and/or recovery of substances from the fluids. Some examples of uses for sorbent materials may include the cleaning of exhaust air emissions from combustion or other industrial processes, the cleaning of waste water streams from industrial processes, providing purified fluids, or the clean-up of accidental spills, such as oil spills.
The growth of environmental consciousness combined with an ever-increasing use of petroleum products has led to a heightened awareness of the need to promptly and effectively remediate pollution caused by various petroleum-based activities. Governmental regulations are also becoming more and more restrictive, with ever increasing requirements for cleaner air and water.
Some methods for controlling and cleaning up oil spills on water may include containment with fences or booms, chemical dispersants to accelerate natural dispersal, and removal which may include burning the oil, skimming the oil from the water surface, or collecting the oil for further processing. Other methods may rely on the use of coagulants and catalysts to chemically interact with the oil, or may use absorbing material such as straw. While these materials may aid in removing spilled oil from water, they fail to provide an adequate environmentally acceptable solution which is able to confine, coagulate and control spilled oil in a short period of time before the oil drops below the surface of the water and forms an emulsion with the water, rendering removal very difficult.
For collection of hydrocarbons, some of the materials used, such as organogels, work only in confined environments where they are not subjected to fluctuation in the medium or environmental conditions which tend to break up bonding interactions. Some materials are unstable at higher temperatures, and therefore are not usable in exhaust streams. Still other materials, such as porous silica based products are inefficient, and inorganic nanowires are not amenable to large scale production, nor are they completely reusable over extended periods of time. Therefore, there remains a need for a sorbent material which can be synthesized on a large scale, is low cost, reusable and is stable in different environmental conditions and in different mediums.